A Jumble of Letters
It's been about a month since I followed that link. It still sends chills down my spine whenever I think about it. Let me explain. Some time ago, I was browsing some 4chan's rip-off /v/ board, and came across a thread whose title was simply a mass of random keys, as if someone had punched a keyboard a few times, and the text was much of the same, but it had several letters repeated with what I thought was random text thrown in. Since I had too much time on my hands and word open, I decided to get rid of the repeated letters. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a link without punctuation. It was still a mass of letters, but the http and com were too hard to ignore. So, I got some free antivirus and prepared for the worst. The site was full of ads, so I came back with adblocker enabled. Once adblocker was on, the site was just block orange, with a small download link in the center. I clicked it, and a zip file entitled "432b" was downloaded. Once unzipped, the file contained two things; a .gba file, and a copy of visualboyadvance to play it in. So, I fired up the emulator and started to play 432b.gba. It played okay, but the turbo button didn't work. The graphics were akin to final fantasy advance VI, but it was not the same game. Instead of a developer name screen, it simply cut to a title, and play was the only option. So, I pressed x to select it and it cut to another black screen for about four seconds. It loaded to a young boy wearing something akin to a Link outfit, but a muddy brown instead of green. The premise of the game was simple—run from a pack of wolves or die by getting eaten, which turned out to be pretty fun. I didn't really see this as creepy, but then again I'm not one of these paranoid creepypasta protagonists. After eventually being chased down and killed a couple times, I noticed something after the fifth death, though. The screens where the wolves could be seen eating you were getting longer, and the character grew thinner and thinner and got slower. The wolves would stay the same speed, however. I wondered if it was possible, by this logic, to die before the game began. After about fifty tries, the character looked near-death by the time the screen faded in to him, and the wolves pounced the moment I gained control. The screen stayed on the wolves feasting for a good twenty seconds, and then cut back to the menu, which had changed to add "continue" to the menu. Selecting this simply brought the camera back to the wolves eating the boy, but it lasted about a minute. Afterwards, the wolves turned away to show the skeleton of the boy, mostly picked clean. Trying again would simply pan to the skeleton for a minute while the wolves howled. The game booted me back to the menu, and "bonus" was now an option. I selected it, and it was a close up of the boy's corpse, still done within the limitations of game boy advance graphics. The other pieces of art were much the same, showing the corpse in various states of decay. The last picture was much different. It was a wolf, foaming at the mouth and with glowing red eyes and glistening teeth. As I exited to the menu, I heard a snarl come from the speakers. I decided to hit play again, but it just started at the point where I got eaten instantly. Upon exiting the emulator itself, the file deleted itself. Shame, I thought, as it was really creepy and also good fun. When I returned to the site, the post was different. It had the same title, but there was no text. And the picture was of that damned wolf with the red eyes. It sent shivers down my spine whenever I thought about it. And occasionally, while I do other things, I will hear howls from my speakers, or sometimes, a snarl. Category:Video Games